Recent News and Press Releases

November 25th marked the shipping of the UK ATC developed Retinal Densiometer prototype (ReD) to Cardiff University’s School of Optometry and Vision Sciences. The device is designed to help diagnose Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of sight loss in adults living in the developed world. Once at Cardiff the prototype will undergo more realistic engineering tests involving human volunteers before further versions are deployed for clinical trials.

This award recognizes outstanding achievement by large groups in collaboration with other institutes, including STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire and the UKATC at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

Astronomers are putting their telescopes aside this week (30-31 October) to look at climate change and biodiversity as they come together with tropical forest researchers to look at how tropical forest changes affect global warming and species distribution.

An international team of astronomers may have found a new way to map quasars,
the energetic and luminous central regions often found in distant galaxies.
Team leader Prof. Andy Lawrence of the University of Edinburgh presents the
new results on Monday 1 July at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews,
Scotland.

The largest project ever undertaken to map out the Universe in three-dimensions
using ESO telescopes has reached the halfway stage. An international team of
astronomers, including members of the University of Edinburgh, has used the
VIMOS instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope to measure the distances to
55 000 galaxies as part of the VIPERS survey. This has already allowed
them to create a remarkable three-dimensional view of how galaxies were distributed
in space in the younger Universe. This reveals the complex web of the large-scale
structure of the Universe in great detail.

The Dark Sky Discovery (DSD) network is today unveiling six new Dark Sky Discovery
Sites on the day that BBC Two’s Stargazing LIVE gets underway.
Dark Sky Discovery Sites are areas identified by the public as safe, accessible
viewing spots where it is dark enough to view stars in
the night sky.

University of Edinburgh astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
to reveal a population of primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion
years ago, when the Universe was less than 4% of its present age. One of these
is probably the most distant galaxy found to date (at redshift 12). These new
observations shed new light on the earliest years of cosmic history.

While parts of the world experience economic hardship, a team of astronomers
co-led by Professsor Philip Best at the Institute for Astronomy in Edinburgh
has found an even bigger slump happening on a cosmic scale.

A restaurant car park, a hotel and a caravan park may not seem the most likely
places for a spot of stargazing but these are just some of the areas being
named as Dark Sky Discovery Sites as a brand new season of stargazing gets
underway.

After more than ten years of work by more than 200 engineers, the Mid InfraRed
Instrument (MIRI), a camera so sensitive it could see a candle on one of Jupiter’s
moons, has been declared ready for delivery by the European Space Agency and
NASA.

Seven teams of high school students from across Scotland will compete to launch
a space experiment that fits into a soft drinks can (a ‘CanSat’)
at the STFC Royal Observatory Edinburgh this week. The competition is part
of a Europe-wide programme organised by the European Space Agency. The cans
have been provided by Irn Bru, and the Scottish CanSats are now ready to launch.

A team of astronomers from the UK, Canada and the Netherlands have commenced
a revolutionary new study of cosmic star-formation history, looking back in
time to when the universe was still in its lively and somewhat unruly youth!
The consortium, co-led by University of Edinburgh astrophysicist Professor
James Dunlop, is using a brand new camera called SCUBA-2, the most powerful
camera ever developed for observing light at "sub-mm" wavelengths
(i.e. light of wavelength 1000 times longer than we can see with our eyes).

A team led by University of Edinburgh astrophysicist Professor James Dunlop
has just released the most sensitive ever infrared image of a representative
region of the distant Universe. The new image comes from the first year of
data taken as part of the five-year UltraVISTA survey. It was made by combining
more than six thousand separate exposures equivalant to an exposure time of
55 hours. The image reveals more than 200,000 galaxies, including the most
massive galaxies yet seen in the early Universe, objects which formed less
than one billion years after the Big Bang.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale
ever observed. The results, presented by Dr Catherine Heymans of the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, are being presented today
(09/01/12) to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. Their
findings reveal a Universe comprised of an intricate cosmic web of dark matter
and galaxies spanning more than one billion light years.

A new camera that will revolutionise the field of submillimetre astronomy
has been unveiled on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. SCUBA-2
is far more sensitive and powerful than previous instruments and can map areas
of the sky hundreds of times faster.

£3.5 million in funding from STFC over the next two years has put UK
astronomers in a strong position to take a leading role in the development
of key instruments on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The E-ELT
is planned to be the largest optical and infrared telescope in the world and
will be tens of times more sensitive than any current ground-based optical
telescope. The project is currently awaiting final approval for construction
to begin.

Astronomers from the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh are joining
their counterparts from Queen's University Belfast and the Universities
of Geneva, Harvard and INAF-TNG in the hunt for extra-solar planets similar
to the Earth. Together they will be building and using a new instrument
called HARPS-N for the Italian 3.5-metre Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in
the Canary Islands. The instrument will be able to analyze the light of
candidates identified from NASA’s Kepler space probe.

A new image of a star-forming region known as the Lagoon Nebula that lies
about 4-5000 light years away has been captured by the European Southern
Observatory’s (ESO’s) UK-designed and built VISTA telescope.

A technology developed to establish the age of galaxies which is now being
used to compare medical scans and a telescope project that has seen UK
companies win £9 million in contracts are being highlighted at a
conference this week as examples of how astronomy can benefit society.

A ‘Human Book’ about ‘Dark Skies and Big Telescopes’ was
available for loan at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival this week (Wednesday
11th August), in the form of Dan Hillier, the manager of the Royal Observatory
of Edinburgh Visitor Centre. Dan from the Science and Technology Facilities
Council’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) was part of the ‘Future
Editions’ library organised which offered 30 specialists on-loan
across the city for festival-goers to chat with for ten minute spells.

Astronomers have captured a spectacular new image in a region of our neighbouring
galaxy known to have an abnormally high rate of star formation that reveals
yet more details about its history and development. The picture, taken
with the UK-designed and built VISTA telescope, is of the Tarantula Nebula,
a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud which contains many stars that can
be difficult to detect because they are enshrouded in the gas and dust
clouds from which they formed. Astronomers were able to take the image
by using ESO’s VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy
) telescope because it can pick up near infra-red light, which we cannot
see ourselves, that has a longer wavelength of visible light, enabling
it to penetrate much of the dust that would normally obscure our view.

The late Dr Timothy Hawarden, who was based for many years at the ’STFC's
UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), has been awarded a NASA Exceptional
Technology Achievement Medal for his pioneering work on innovative cooling
techniques that make possible future infrared space telescopes, including
the one that will follow the Hubble Space Telescope. The awards were presented
at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, home of the Hubble, on 16
June 2010. Nobel laureate, Dr, John Mather, an American astronomer who
was an early convert to Tim’s concept, accepted it on Tim’s
behalf.

The medals accompanying the award were presented to Tim’s widow,
Frances today (15 July 2010) at a brief ceremony held at the UK ATC (formerly
the Royal Observatory Edinburgh or ROE) during a meeting of the Science
Working Group for the James Webb Space Telescope. At the ceremony Robert
Smith, an historian charged with writing a comprehensive history of this
huge NASA/ESA mission, gave an introduction to the significance of Tim’s
work to an audience of NASA and ESA scientists together with some of Tim’s
colleagues at the UK ATC.

An exhibition including two innovative videos is showcasing inspirational
plans to build the largest optical telescope in the world – the European
Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).

The giant telescope is in an advanced stage of design by astronomers and
industry across Europe, led by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The
E-ELT, with a main mirror 42 metres in diameter, is expected to revolutionise
our understanding of the Universe and its origins.

Secrets of the Universe are to be revealed as a new telescope equipped with the
world?s most powerful digital camera begins its observations of the night sky.
The Pan-STARRS sky survey telescope - known as PS1 - will enable scientists
to better understand the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, the material
that is thought to account for much of the mass of the universe but has never
been proven to exist.

Astronomers from the Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and Queen?s University
Belfast together with researchers from around the world are using the telescope
to scan the skies from dusk to dawn each night.

The world's largest radio telescope has been officially launched at a special ceremony in the Netherlands attended by astronomers from the UK and many other countries.
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally opened LOFAR, which stands for Low Frequency Array, on Saturday 12 June. Representatives from consortia in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom then officially signed the memorandum that kicks off their scientific collaboration.

A working replica of MIRI - the pioneering camera and spectrometer for the
James Webb Space Telescope - has just been shipped (16th March) from the Science
and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Centre, bringing the Webb telescope one small step closer
to embarking on its journey into space where it will produce the sharpest images
yet of the farthest depths of the cosmos.

The Orion Nebula reveals many of its hidden secrets in a dramatic image taken
by the new UK-designed VISTA telescope. The survey telescope's huge field of
view can show the full splendour of the whole nebula and VISTA's infrared vision
also allows it to peer deeply into dusty regions that are normally hidden and
expose the curious behaviour of the very active young stars buried there.

The Royal Observatory runs a number of events for the
Public. Information about these is available from the Visitor
Centre. There are also site-wide events include the
annual Open Days, which are
part of the Edinburgh Doors Open Days.